NASA's continued quest to explore our solar system and beyond received a boost of new information this week with three key missions proving not only that they are up and running, but that their science potential is exceptional. ...

Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is an important and necessary step towards averting climate change. However, in our efforts to go green, we also need to be mindful of other consequences, both intended and ...

Wind and solar farms are known to have local effects on heat, humidity and other factors that may be beneficial—or detrimental—to the regions in which they are situated. A new climate-modeling study finds that a massive ...

The Earth's magnetic field extends from pole to pole and is strongly affected by solar wind from the sun. This "wind" is a stream of charged particles constantly ejected from the sun's surface. Occasional sudden flashes of ...

On Saturday, NASA launched a bold mission to fly directly into the sun's atmosphere, with a spacecraft named the Parker Solar Probe, after solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker. The incredibly resilient vessel, vaguely shaped ...

The first ever spacecraft to fly directly toward the Sun is poised to blast off Saturday, on a mission to plunge into our star's sizzling atmosphere and unlock the mysteries of the center of the solar system.

Solar wind

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles—a plasma—ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed with the passage of time. These particles are able to escape the sun's gravity, in part because of the high temperature of the corona, but also because of high kinetic energy that particles gain through a process that is not well-understood.

The solar wind creates the Heliosphere, a vast bubble in the interstellar medium surrounding the solar system. Other phenomena include geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, the aurorae such as the Northern Lights, and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun.